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Conciliation

Conflict often involves multiple stakeholders, and multiple sources. ToP conciliation has the capacity to work through them all and rebuild relationships. ToP practitioners are well-known for respectfully working through heavily entrenched conflict and bringing conciliation to the situation. There are specific tools and methods for each phase of conciliation.

ToP books on conciliation include More Than Fifty Ways to Build Team Consensus by R. Bruce Williams,

Methods include:The Mountains from Molehills Diagnostic tool helps determine the depth and entrenchment of a conflict, since some types of conflict are easy to work through and others are very difficult. The results of this is a determination of how much effort will need to be used by the facilitator in bringing conciliation to the situation.The molehill starts with objective level conflict based on understanding, moving up to a triggered emotional, reflective level of conflict, to interpretive values based, entrenched conflict, to decisional level conflict as a strategy.

events, highs, lows, turning points, titles

The Wall of Wonder or Historical Scan uses the details of past history to build a common story that participants can stand on to understand the perspectives and the depth of feeling of one another. The result is a publishable story with details, of the situation and the larger context that surrounds it. The WW takes from 1-3 hours depending on the size of the group and has broad application far beyond that of conflict

Root Cause Problem Solving allows any group to safely surface the sources of conflict that are often hidden and do it is a highly respectful manner. The result is an analysis of the situation that is not a simple statement of polar opposites, which is generally the symptom of conflict, that all participants can see needs to be dealt with for their own sakes. This can take 3 hours with all the necessary participants together.

3 to 1 Model Merging shows how to approach or solve a problem by merging different solutions and looking at the underlying criteria and values that are assumed by the models. The result is one model that all participants can see will work, and commitment to implement the model.

Team Timelining cements the existing resolve of any group and converts that resolve into a complete set of practical actions that people actually want to be accountable to accomplish. The result allows all participants to know what they need to have accomplished by when, and gives permission to all to find out if others have done their part in the final outcome. Can be done with any size group with ability to visually see the emerging timeline.